Hurricane Sandy (New Jersey, 2012) demonstrated that, even in today's high-technology environment, communication systems remain fragile, prone to damage, and capable of being overwhelmed by events. More particularly, during that storm, telephone, cable television, Internet, and other communication networks suffered severe damage. This damage caused a situation in which hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, could not communicate with one another or with people outside of the storm-affected area. On a similar note, commercial organizations could not reach their employees, customers, and suppliers. Indeed, at one point, it was reported that brokerage firms at the New York Stock Exchange were experiencing difficulty executing trades because key personnel could not be contacted. Worse still, government officials, first-responders, and other critical personnel could not send warnings, updates, instructions, etc. to the storm victims.
While Hurricane Sandy posed a dramatic challenge to the affected communication systems, it does not require an epic storm to cause communication problems. Indeed, real-time communications and failures thereof can be critical to the success of any organization and, more particularly, those whose owners wish to build smarter enterprises. With personnel, processes, communication devices, etc. in many of these enterprises spread around the world, the communication challenges can be immense. Communication failures can disrupt these organizations leading to undelivered products/services, dissatisfied customers, confusion in the market place, etc.
Most people in organizations (commercial or otherwise) who wish to communicate merely want to express their thoughts relative to whatever mission, job, goal, etc. that they might be attempting to fulfill. Yet, to do so, they must consider a number of factors that are more or less irrelevant to those actual thoughts. For instance, the communication device they use to express themselves might be relatively powerful with a full set of user interface features. In contrast, the device with which the recipients might prefer to receive their messages could be comparatively limited. In one such scenario the person generating a message might be using a desktop computer with a full keyboard and an email program with a complete graphical user interface while their intended recipients might be using rudimentary cellular phones with limited capabilities for receiving messages. In this case, the cellular phones might be effectively limited to receiving SMS (Short Message Service) messages. Thus, to communicate successfully, the sender might need to format their messages in such a way that they will display properly on the more limited devices. Of course, the sending party might not even be aware of the recipients' limitations thereby creating an even higher possibility of communication failure.
Moreover, even non-technical issues pose communication challenges. For instance, one or more of the parties involved in an attempted communication might understand a language different than that understood by the sender. In such cases, the sender might need to have a translation performed before sending the message. Additionally, user preferences can also play a role in limiting the ability of people to communicate. Of course, some people prefer to receive fully formatted emails. Others prefer Twitter messages while others prefer to receive POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) system calls. Thus, while a particular sender might be able to communicate effectively with some of their intended recipients, it is increasingly likely (with the continuing proliferation of communication technologies) that their communications with at least some intended recipients will suffer.
Additionally, communicating in real-time can be one of the keys for building a smarter enterprise. Many enterprises have to deal with people, processes, and communication devices that span numerous countries, time zones, cultural divides, languages, legal systems, as well as various enterprise and/or user related rules and preferences. To make matters more complex (and the likelihood of communication difficulties all the more likely), various communication-related trends and disruptive technologies continue to wash across the world. For instance, a few years ago Twitter had not yet been invented. Now in some settings it is vital for successful, real-time communications. Yet, having differing communication strategies to accommodate all of these factors can be prohibitively expensive.